I am an attending physician on the inpatient Infectious Diseases Service. My clinical practice focuses on bacterial, viral, parasitic, and fungal infections in highly immunocompromised patients, in particular patients with cancers of the blood and lymph nodes and in bone marrow transplant recipients. I have a specific interest in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of opportunistic fungal infections, including pulmonary and disseminated disease caused by Aspergillus, Rhizopus, Mucor, Cryptococcus, and Pneumocystis species as well as mucosal and systemic disease caused by Candida species.

Beyond my clinical activities, I oversee a laboratory-based research program that studies the development of effective immune responses to pathogenic fungi. I hold a joint appointment in the Immunology Program of the Sloan Kettering Institute and am a faculty member in the Gerstner Sloan Kettering Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Memorial Sloan Kettering as well as in the Microbial Pathogenesis Program at Weill Cornell Graduate School.

My laboratory research focuses on understanding how cells of the immune system recognize opportunistic fungi and mount sterilizing immune responses to this class of microbes. Our work defines how immune and non-immune cells in the lung cooperate to clear infectious conidia (spores) from the ubiquitous mold Aspergillus fumigatus and prevent the formation of tissue-invasive hyphae. We have developed fluorescence-based tools to monitor conidial uptake and killing by infection-fighting cells in the lung and harness this technology in animal models of fungal challenge to reconstruct the molecular and cellular events required for effective immunity.

We have made contributions to understanding immune recognition of A. fumigatus via host C-type lectin receptor signaling, the transport of A. fumigatus to lung-draining lymph nodes for adaptive antifungal immune responses, the role of lung epithelial cells in recruiting neutrophils to infected airways, and the role of monocytes in innate and adaptive antifungal immunity. An emerging direction in the laboratory relates to the role of endogenous fungal communities (mycobiome) in mediating immune homeostasis. Our work seeks to understand how fungi interact with the immune system and how these interactions shape human disease and immune function.